


rumours (and other things that thrive in the dark)

by darcylindbergh



Series: the tales and triumphs of the fucking shit up jacket [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 1970s, Introducing: The Fucking Shit Up Jacket, M/M, Pre-Relationship, The Principality Aziraphale, the m25
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:09:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29583537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcylindbergh/pseuds/darcylindbergh
Summary: Aziraphale doesn’t mean to meddle, per se, but he hears things.*Every legend has a beginning.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley
Series: the tales and triumphs of the fucking shit up jacket [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2173449
Comments: 114
Kudos: 291
Collections: Unleash The Chaos - Zine Fics and Art





	rumours (and other things that thrive in the dark)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the team of Unleash the Chaos zine for all this good good content surrounding one of my fav characters of the show: the fucking shit up jacket. That's his fucking shit up jacket!!

_London, 1973_

“Can I help you find anything?”

Aziraphale startles, turns to look, and finds a shop girl smiling indulgently at him. She takes in his velvet waistcoat, his pocket watch, and adds, rather belatedly, “Sir?”

He’s out of place in this shop and they both know it; she must think him an ambitious idiot about to embark on some kind of dangerous home renovations of the sort learnt from books without ever picking up a hammer. Aziraphale smiles back anyway, and doesn’t bother trying to correct her. 

_Needs must when the devil drives_ , he thinks, and he’s not leaving without what he came for.

He needs a miracle he can’t afford to perform, and this is as close as he’s going to get.

The shop is more warehouse than showroom, with single samples of the products laid out set out for viewing, the rest still packed away in boxes. Aziraphale sweeps his gaze over row after row—jackets and vests, gloves and goggles, boots and hard-hats—and nods decisively.

“My dear girl,” he says, pointing to a bright orange vest with shiny vinyl reflectors sewn across the chest, “do you have something like this that’s a bit more . . . waterproof?”

*

Aziraphale doesn’t mean to _meddle_ , per se, but he hears things.

Hearing things is part of the job, really—keeping an ear to the ground, taking note of anything that doesn’t quite add up to something human—and the stories he’s hearing now raise the hair on the back of Aziraphale’s neck. Rumours swirl throughout London, whispers being passed from one man to to the next, until it seems like _everyone_ is talking about a construction project and a curse.

There have been strange occurrences with heavy machinery, with demolition explosions, with gravel pits, or so they say. A man no one notices until it’s too late, caught in this accident or that, always disappearing before anyone can reach him—but the crews remain present and accounted for. Warnings are spread by seasoned men to the younger, warnings to stay on work in the city, to stay away from night shifts. Warnings that the project paving a circle around London is as damned as any noose.

Aziraphale hears things, and he’s heard enough.

He’s a Principality, after all. Protection is in his blood, in his bones. Going against his nature splinters him along his seams like a shield losing its strength, and he can’t take another blow like the one he took six years ago. The one he took with his heart in his throat and destruction packed into a tartan thermos, passed into hands he’s still not sure he can trust.

So far the things Aziraphale’s been hearing have sounded, for lack of a better word, _temporary_.

He wants to stop hearing things before they become anything else.

The shop girl fits a jacket around Aziraphale’s shoulders, pointing out the orange panels and the anti-moisture coating, the bright reflecting stripes and the enormous pockets. She compliments the blue against the colour of his eyes, but he doesn’t have the courage to tell her that it isn’t for him.

He pays cash for it and takes it home on the Tube, and waits.

*

“I’m not wearing that.”

Aziraphale looks up from his book. Crowley is leaning extravagantly in the doorway of the back room, staring reproachfully at the jacket Aziraphale has left lying over the back of the sofa in approximately the same spot Crowley usually sits.

“Perhaps you should consider it,” Aziraphale returns evenly.

“It’s hideous,” Crowley goes on, which Aziraphale privately thinks is a bit rich coming from someone wearing a silk shirt, velveteen trousers, and what appears to be a dust bunny on his upper lip, “and useless. What do I need a hi-vis jacket for? The point, you know, is usually to go _unnoticed_.”

“And you’re very good at it, I hear.”

“I _am_ , thank you.”

Crowley slides into the room, picking up the jacket with two fingers as if it were a particularly distasteful bit of rubbish and tossing it over the back of the chair at the desk. He takes its place on the sofa and pours himself a glass of Aziraphale’s wine, casual as anything, but Aziraphale can still see a host of little clues that speak to a recent discorporation: his limbs are slightly too long, his hair slightly too red. His glasses are pushed up hard against the bridge of his nose, hiding sensitive eyes that Aziraphale knows will be stretched yellow from edge to edge.

He’s not as subtle as he thinks he is. Aziraphale sighs.

“So you couldn’t _possibly_ have anything to do with this spectre I keep hearing about, then,” he says, looking over his book. Crowley feigns polite disinterest.

“A spectre? That so?”

Aziraphale nods. “Been hearing all sorts of stories about mysterious accidents on this road project they’re doing—the London Eyeball, I think.”

“Orbital,” Crowley corrects automatically, “the London _Orbital_.” An eyebrow raises pointedly, and Crowley rushes to cover himself. “I only mean—I was just reading—”

Aziraphale closes his book with a _snap_. “Oh, come off it, Crowley, I know you’re up to something.”

“Not—well, don’t say it like that, implying that I’m—”

“I’m not implying anything—”

“—doing something you disapprove of—”

“—except perhaps that you ought to stop getting yourself bloody well discorporated—”

Crowley’s mouth pops open to join his eyes in surprised affront. “I haven’t been discorporated!”

“You have been _discorporated_ ,” Aziraphale repeats, so sharply it would have left scars in any lesser being, “nearly six times in the last six months, and you’re—”

_Scaring me._

He doesn’t say it. He can’t say it. He picks his book back up and starts to read again, steadfastly ignoring the demon sitting on his sofa with that silly moustache and those trembling hands. He can’t bear to look.

He no longer has any idea what the book is about.

Six times in six months, that Crowley has slunk into the back room here, or showed up at Aziraphale’s favourite café, or slid into the seat next to him at Aziraphale’s local, limbs too long and eyes too yellow, still trying to fit himself back into a proper human form after having blown himself to smithereens. Six times in the last six months Aziraphale has had to look at him and realise Crowley had skated up against _almost_ ; six times in the last six months Aziraphale has had to look at him and realise Crowley had _come back—_ this time, at least.

Who knew what might happen next time? 

Who knew what might happen if a superstitious road worker, warned of curses and damnation, put something holy and terrible in his pockets?

Aziraphale sniffs, and stares at the page harder, waiting for the words to resolve into something that makes sense. He knows what would happen, even if he doesn’t want to think it.

He’d be _alone_.

Crowley watches him for a long time, silent and somber like he never is. Eventually he gets up and recorks the wine, takes their half-drunk glasses back into the kitchen. Comes back with a mug of cocoa, passing it to Aziraphale like an apology, rocking on his heels like he’s going to say something.

He doesn’t, in the end.

He takes the jacket with him when he leaves.

*

The night is cold, and Crowley’s grin is sharp against the shadows.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he tells the darkness, the presence bobbing at the edges of his awareness like a lantern. “Sigil’s not finished yet, but it won’t exactly be a groovy time when it is.”

“I _should_ hang about until you’re done and put everything back to rights,” Aziraphale answers, stepping forward and surveying the damp field alongside him. A collection of tall stakes with orange flags spell out a line across the land, wobbling a little where Crowley’s been moving it, one-by-one, to the west. There’s a pause, and then he adds, “You were supposed to miracle that jacket to fit, you know.”

Crowley shrugs, the white reflectors on his chest shifting, and refuses to be embarrassed for wearing it. It’s just a terrific disguise, he tells himself. Makes him look official. Makes him look like he doesn’t need to be stopped and questioned.

That it has also cut down dramatically on the inconvenient discorporations is something for Crowley to know and for Aziraphale to never find out. Turns out that high visibility does, in fact, have its purposes.

“’S’not every construction manager that has a fitted safety jacket, you know.”

“It can’t be keeping you warm enough like that.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I like it roomy.” He gives Aziraphale a sidelong glance. “Came this way, after all.”

It had taken Crowley a while to figure that out, actually. The first time he’d tried it on—for _research—_ he’d been baffled by how big it was on him, leaving him drowning in stiff waterproofing and hot white reflecting patches. Aziraphale must have known Crowley’s approximate size, mustn’t he? Crowley knew Aziraphale’s; that was simply a side effect of having known one another for six thousand years.

That had been when Crowley realised.

_It’s because it came from you. Because it was worn around your shoulders, before mine. Fitted to your body, the ghost of you inside it now fitted around mine._

Aziraphale is quiet at that. There’s no acknowledgement either of them could say out loud anyway.

Crowley trudges on to the next stake, eager to leave the unsaid things behind. He’s a preposterous sight, he knows, all knees and orange and bright visibility as he heaves the stake up and stabs it down into the ground six feet to the west, but it’s only Aziraphale. He doesn’t mind.

“This would go faster if you would help, you know,” he says, heading for the next one.

“I didn’t actually come to help.”

“What’d you come for, then?”

It’s Aziraphale’s turn to shrug. “I’m a Principality.”

“No humans here to look after, O Angel of the Eastern Gate. Just us chickens.”

“Mm,” Aziraphale agrees mildly. “Just us chickens.”

Crowley looks up, another stake in hand. Aziraphale’s hands are clasped and his eyes are steady, looking back at Crowley with all deliberation. Watching him as he moves across the field, doing Hell’s work by hand; watching him as the white reflectors on the jacket shift and shine under the moonlight.

Watching _over_ him.

The realisation rises in Crowley’s chest, expanding like a balloon under his ribs—not hollow, but heavy with a warning and a plea. _Don’t go unscrewing the cap._

It’s a realisation that says _no_ , and yet still sounds like a promise. A realisation that says _no_ and sounds more like _not yet._ Like _perhaps someday._

The jacket is thick and heavy on Crowley’s shoulders, the waterproofing rigid and the reflectors ridiculous, but it’s the same thing that’s always been there: a white wing, stretching over him.

Some things look different, these days, even though they’re still the same. It’s not quite _someday_ yet, these days they’re living, but Aziraphale’s here anyway.

Crowley pushes the stake back into the ground, then dusts his hands off and snaps his fingers. The rest of the stakes pop into their new westward places, easy as you please.

“What do you say we get out of this field, eh? Get a drink, warm up a bit?”

Aziraphale’s mouth tilts up on one side. “All right,” he agrees. His eyes dart to Crowley’s and away again, a studied attempt at casual. “If you’ll—if you’ll give me a lift?”

Crowley’s mouth curls up too, matching that barely-there smile that speaks volumes. Something warm and liquid gold spreads through his chest, familiar in all its patience and tenderness, but this time it feels a little less like a bruise.

“‘Course, angel,” he says. “Anywhere you want to go.”

*

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @[forineffablereasons](http://www.forineffablereasons.tumblr.com)!


End file.
